Donald Trump claims the US and Iran will jointly excavate and transfer Tehran’s uranium stockpile to American soil, contradicting Iranian statements.
PHOENIX: President Donald Trump has declared that the United States and Iran would jointly remove uranium from Tehran’s nuclear sites using excavators.
He stated the material would then be transferred to US territory under any future peace deal.
“We’re going to go in together with Iran,” Trump told a gathering of the conservative Turning Point USA movement. He insisted they would “take it back home to the USA very soon.”
This claim directly contradicts earlier statements from Iran’s foreign ministry. Iranian officials said the Islamic Republic’s stockpile of enriched uranium would not be transferred “anywhere.”
Trump’s comments elaborated on his claim from Thursday that Iran had agreed to hand over its enriched uranium. He provided no detailed mechanism for such a complex transfer, repeatedly using the term “nuclear dust” to refer to the stockpile.
The US accuses Iran of hoarding enriched uranium to potentially build an atomic bomb. Trump sounded increasingly optimistic about securing a deal with Tehran, telling AFP on Friday there were “no sticking points” and an agreement was “very close.”
He was introduced at the event by Erika Kirk, widow of the group’s assassinated founder Charlie Kirk. Trump’s remarks on the uranium transfer came despite the significant logistical and diplomatic hurdles such an operation would entail.
